The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it may be described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present technology.
Maps, in either printed or digitally displayed form, may often show a parking lot or parking area as a single area, or as an area with representative parking spaces that are for illustrative purposes only, which are not representative of the actual parking spaces within a parking lot. For example, the sizes of the parking spaces are typically not proportional to the remainder of the map content or otherwise to scale such that a vehicle would have enough information to accurately locate an actual parking space within the parking area.
Fully automated driving systems are preferably designed to operate a vehicle on a road without driver interaction or other external control, for example, in self-driving or autonomous vehicles. Advanced driver safety systems may monitor the situation of a vehicle, including its location, as well as a location of other vehicles in its vicinity. Currently, autonomous vehicles may be able to generally identify parking lots and certain vehicles parked within parking spaces when proximate to those vehicles, but they do not have the ability to refer to real-time data or an interactive map of the parking lot, which could potentially be developed and updated to not only identify precise parking space locations, but to indicate vacant and occupied parking space status information. Such parking information is desirable and may be used in a variety of situations. The parking information could be used for predicting the behavior of other vehicles, used in generating a smooth trajectory for path planning after selecting a parking spot, or used for planning and/or reasoning proper vehicle behavior in parking areas.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide highly accurate, detailed parking space information with more accuracy and less expended time.